Friends of mine lost their first baby just weeks shy of the due date... I don't begrudge them wanting something tangible to remember him by, but the photo is damn weird if you know the story behind it. I was honestly a little shocked the hospital took it for them.

i lost a cousin to a seemingly random shooting over two years ago. There were family members who took pictures of him laying in the casket. i was mortified.i never wanted to remember him laying dead in his casket.

If you live in a city, perhaps born and raised there, you may look at a local landmark and think about one day visiting it. But you never do. Tourists go there, maybe, to line up for hours to ride to the top floor and look out on the city, but you never do.

Then you move away, and you think back to how you lived right next to the landmark and never went to visit it. So as a tourist, you go and line up and take the elevator ride to the top and look out at the city, but it isn't your city anymore, not since you've moved away. It's a city belonging to all those people who live down below, running from their home to their job, passing by this landmark every day but never stopping in.

These families should have taken a picture while their daughter was alive, but only now in death do they realize how those precious moments of life were fleeting and were taken for granted. It's their way of being tourists, of grabbing hold of something which is no longer theirs to hold. A cheap plastic souvenir of lost chances.

In the Victorian era those portraits made sense, photography was expensive and a death portrait was quite possibly the only way to have any portrait of the departed loved one.

People taking photos now is something I don't understand. When my grandparents died my uncle took casket photos, but I just don't see how that's the memory you want to have when you have so many other photographic records.

I met a local woman through Facebook who collects those damned things. She's a Goth MILF, but she's got postmortem portraits everywhere in her house, and some tools of the trade like this adjustable wrought iron stand that held a body in a standing position. I can't abide those things and I go to great lengths to avoid running into her.

rynthetyn:In the Victorian era those portraits made sense, photography was expensive and a death portrait was quite possibly the only way to have any portrait of the departed loved one.

People taking photos now is something I don't understand. When my grandparents died my uncle took casket photos, but I just don't see how that's the memory you want to have when you have so many other photographic records.

To be fair, a few years after the dauguerrotype was introduced studios were everywhere and all but the absolute poorest could afford it. Levels of quality of course varied but the low end could be pretty cheap.

Coelacanth:I met a local woman through Facebook who collects those damned things. She's a Goth MILF, but she's got postmortem portraits everywhere in her house, and some tools of the trade like this adjustable wrought iron stand that held a body in a standing position. I can't abide those things and I go to great lengths to avoid running into her.

I confess a minor fascination with the vintage postmortem photos, if only because they force me to think about my own mortality. What I don't get off on is battlefield or crime footage. But those old photos are so damn creepy that I can't help but be interested. I swear, I am not a goth or even a dork.

/I believe Fark bans/time-outs people who post pics of anything dead, just so you all know//at the very least they are deleted

rynthetyn:In the Victorian era those portraits made sense, photography was expensive and a death portrait was quite possibly the only way to have any portrait of the departed loved one.

People taking photos now is something I don't understand. When my grandparents died my uncle took casket photos, but I just don't see how that's the memory you want to have when you have so many other photographic records.

Twice I have spent some time taking photos at the local historic cemetary (the stone carvings are amazing art), and into the 1940s apparently some families were fine taking photos of their loved ones, (especially) including very young children, and even displaying them on the gravestones, although only a few of those are still intact. It's very sobering when walking around the grounds.

my Mom told me stories of deceased relatives displayed in the parlor when she was a child. there was no air conditioning so fresh flowers were brought in daily to fight the aroma. my Dad told me it would often take relatives days to arrive after receiving the news. many still traveled by horse and train back then. Dad also told me male children would sometimes be dressed in feminine fashion for their first few years depending on the Mothers whims. Mom told me they took photos with the deceased for rememberances and to send to relatives overseas who would not be able to attend.

Since most children would not have had their images captured prior to their untimely deaths, it makes perfect sense; although the practice would seem utterly taboo in contemporary Western culture.

It isn't as taboo as they think. Actually when parents have a stillborn baby or a baby who dies shortly after birth it is encouraged that they take pictures if they want to. There's a service online that tries to put parents in touch with photographers who will take these kinds of pictures, I believe free of charge. I have heard people being encouraged to do this after suffering a loss even if they don't think they want to at the time, because many people regret not doing it later on. Without pictures it can feel like the baby never existed.

When my second and third children were born I got ceramic handprints done by a local business. With the third child facebook had become a thing and that's how I found out that this is also a service that she provides - she'll go to the hospital and do free handprints for parents who have lost babies.

Since my third child is only four months old this is making me too sad to keep thinking about.

I never went into those sections there, just like I was never big into the Boobies links here. Here, Drew's always been pretty careful to keep it PG-13+, and the admins of Reddit were deluded that nobody would ever stretch the boundaries beyond common sense, when given every opportunity and motive to do so. I was as vocal about that as I have been about the excesses of the backlash.

It's possible to think both sides out of line and acting poorly, y'know.....or are you a Republican?

In any case, both sides of that debate are now acting like retards, and Chen's picking the low-hanging fruit that's left from that crap having been banned three months ago. To put this in Fark terms, he's being Ric Romero; if his interest were actually in exposing purveyors of kiddie porn, that train had already left that station, and "the story" has moved on, yet he's dwelling on this. His motives for that are quite clear, hence my joke.

For me, this is the culmination of some thinking I've had for a long while: first, that site has long since gone completely juvenile. Second, it's gotten really weird in ways well beyond perverts and militant [insert your favorite -ist or -ism here].

So I came home. My original Fark account number was in either the five digits. I have an SA account I'll be dusting off in due course, too, and yes, I am aware that the original backlash against Reddit's Full Metal Stupid originated there. I traded a higher link frequency for an multiple-orders-of-magnitude increase in noise-to-signal ratio. My mistake. But really, this is just part of the usual rise-fall-decline cycle of major internet sites.

Mare_Imbrium:It isn't as taboo as they think. Actually when parents have a stillborn baby or a baby who dies shortly after birth it is encouraged that they take pictures if they want to.

My fiance's sister showed me a picture of her dead baby. It was farking disturbing and yes their family is the type that takes pictures at funerals. It's farked with me head for a while because I had never seen anything like that.

Also wombats I think you posted in the wrong thread but then again there was a subreddit called r/deadjailbait so maybe not?

Personally I wouldn't take pictures at funerals but photos in the situation where a baby passes before or shortly after birth I understand, because it is hoped that in the first scenario there are plenty of pictures and letters and other types of ways to remember the dead but in the latter instance those pictures might be all you ever have.

I'm not sure I would show people if I didn't ask first if they were comfortable seeing them, though.

A Terrible Human:Mare_Imbrium: It isn't as taboo as they think. Actually when parents have a stillborn baby or a baby who dies shortly after birth it is encouraged that they take pictures if they want to.

Also wombats I think you posted in the wrong thread but then again there was a subreddit called r/deadjailbait so maybe not?

Nah. I made an Adrian Chen joke, and somebody decided I must inherently be into kiddie porn for thinking him an irresponsible journalist. I'm kinda bummed by that. My problem is not with the backlash; that was long overdue. I was vocal about that, and feel no need to apologize for actions nobody here saw under a handle I no longer use. My problem is that it's going full-bore French Revolution, and it's going to provide more examples of "internet life" spilling over into real-world tragedy. I think that a terrible shame: the whole thing was a real "we have met the enemy, and he is us" moment for the whole internet.

Reddit missed the opportunity to do the right thing at the right time, but it's addressed now, and Chen's now abusing all notions of journalistic license he may ever have had, and well after the horse was out of the barn, to boot. Given his and Gawker's track record, I really don't feel I should need to defend that point.

For me, that episode was simply the coup de grace on a site that had long since become a creepshow in many, many contexts. So, like I said in the post just above yours, I came home, because it got to a point where I did not want to be associated, even at arm's length, with any given side/faction/nutjobs. At least here, I know somebody's running the asylum, and will decisively stop this sort of thing, both the bad acts and the bad backlashes/retaliations, before it reaches that kind of level.

Going back on-topic: nothing wrong with taking pictures of a deceased child. I would point out that that is basically the line, right there, though, and that certain high-profile politicians have taken that too far.

rynthetyn:In the Victorian era those portraits made sense, photography was expensive and a death portrait was quite possibly the only way to have any portrait of the departed loved one.

There is a guy who collects old undeveloped film and teases the pictures out of the old rolls. He commented that people of modest means often took one photo of something important. So you have these rolls where each photo is months sometimes years apart.

AverageAmericanGuy:These families should have taken a picture while their daughter was alive, but only now in death do they realize how those precious moments of life were fleeting and were taken for granted. It's their way of being tourists, of grabbing hold of something which is no longer theirs to hold. A cheap plastic souvenir of lost chances.

I went to a buddies house a few years ago. They had a family picture on the wall of him, his wife, and 4 kids. I asked him who the baby was since I thought he only had 3 kids, and why everyone looked so sad. It was a picture of the day they had a stillborn. I felt like such an ass.

When I was cleaning out my parents' attic, I came across a dead portrait of my great grandmother. It freaked me out. I tried to get rid of it, but my mom caught me and took it and put it in her closet. I dread when my parents die b/c I'll have to look at that damn creepy portrait again.

I took pictures at a funeral once. It was for the friends of the deceased who couldn't make it in to town and they were very appreciative.I took pictures of my step-mother at her funeral because the last time my dad saw her she was convulsing on the floor and vomiting before she died, so this was a better way to see her.

No Such Agency:AverageAmericanGuy:These families should have taken a picture while their daughter was alive, but only now in death do they realize how those precious moments of life were fleeting and were taken for granted. It's their way of being tourists, of grabbing hold of something which is no longer theirs to hold. A cheap plastic souvenir of lost chances.

KrispyKritter:my Mom told me stories of deceased relatives displayed in the parlor when she was a child. there was no air conditioning so fresh flowers were brought in daily to fight the aroma. my Dad told me it would often take relatives days to arrive after receiving the news. many still traveled by horse and train back then. Dad also told me male children would sometimes be dressed in feminine fashion for their first few years depending on the Mothers whims. Mom told me they took photos with the deceased for rememberances and to send to relatives overseas who would not be able to attend.

I wonder if death certificates were common back then or if these photos were also proof that the person was dead to relatives far away.

XplodedSynapses:The pictures of the babbies were the worst ones i ever saw.

i lost a cousin to a seemingly random shooting over two years ago. There were family members who took pictures of him laying in the casket. i was mortified.i never wanted to remember him laying dead in his casket.

/To each their own, i guess.

There's a branch of my family who take pictures of every family member who dies. Most of the photos are the corpses in the coffin, but there is one photo of a mom holding her baby who died of SIDSI find it incredibly disrespectful. Even worse, they will send me copies of the photos---which I've repeatedly asked them not to do---'cause "we want you to have something to remember them by."

gibbon1:rynthetyn: In the Victorian era those portraits made sense, photography was expensive and a death portrait was quite possibly the only way to have any portrait of the departed loved one.

There is a guy who collects old undeveloped film and teases the pictures out of the old rolls. He commented that people of modest means often took one photo of something important. So you have these rolls where each photo is months sometimes years apart.

Found FilmLink

I just wasted two hours there. Good thing I don't have work today. Thanks for the link... I think.

I understand why folks take funeral pictures. Sometimes people want to make it to the funeral can't and the photos can help them get a better sense of closure even without being able to actually attend. And sometimes it can make things better, if the body looks a whole lot less horrible than whatever awful thing their mind might be concocting. Those funeral home people can do a lovely job and sometimes the body looking peaceful and not all messed up can be reassuring. Instead of the loved one's image of their friend or relative's last look being something gorey and awful, they can replace that last mental image with them peaceful and presentable. Also some funeral pics help reassure folks who couldn't attend that the deceased got a lovely and appropriate send off. I'm not one who's big on caring about a nice funeral, but some folks feel better to know that it was nice.

However, those photos should only be shared with folks who specifically request to see them and even then, they should come with a hard to miss warning of what you're about to see so you don't open the email expecting old live pictures or pictures of things from the funeral like the other family members and the casket and such and get to the one of the actual deceased person without a chance to brace yourself or click past without looking. I personally don't care to see pictures of the my deceased friends and relatives. But I don't fault others for wanting to. Everyone's grieving process is different.

After a relative of mine died we were going through a box of old pictures some of them were the old tin ones. There were a number of deceased pictures in there and a lot of them were children. They called the ones of the children "sleeping angels".

I have a friend who is always posting pictures from a place called 'The Thantos Archives' on facebook and I find them disturbing and have blocked the site but some slip through via linking in some way. I don't understand why someone would want to look at some strangers dead relatives. But she has a brain tumor and death seems to be on her mind a lot as she is facing a second surgery to remove the part of the tumor that was not removed the first time...

My younger brother and his wife lost a baby almost two years ago and pictures were taken. When I was visiting I was asked by my stepmom if I wanted to see them. I respectfully declined and nothing was pushed. Mom said "It's okay, some people just can't look at those kinds of pictures."

Conversely a cousin lost a baby at 32 weeks a year ago and was posting numerous pictures daily on facebook for several months, I had to block pictures from her because it was horrifying to be scrolling through my newsfeed and being assaulted by 'dead baby' pictures. At 32 weeks a baby doesn't look quite 'right', quite 'finished' and they must have taken hundreds of pictures in various poses. It was unsettling to say the least. {{This was her third miscarriage and she just seems to thrive on the attention, just wallows in it, and just keeps getting pregnant...}}

I find them very creepy and disturbing and don't care to look at people that are not living, I guess it's all a mater of what someone is comfortable with.

The photos are usually tasteful, and even attractive. They could paint eyes, add color to flowers, add detail to clothing and so on. Many of the children's photos look like either a sleeping child or a doll.

Now, here's the interesting fact. Read what the little ones died from. Whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, polio... That list sound familiar? I'll bet if you asked those parents, not a damned one would be an anti-vaxxer.